Dark Knight Megathread

I read your points! Very interesting, I wasn't thinking too deeply when I wrote the stuff. Was mainly thinking about taking auto attack hits.

Offensively, I've only heard friends say it's boring outside of the 2min. Seems like to be a tricky issue, as the 30s recast ogcd attack we had before was "too busy" for some.

blood gauge interaction too. Would another blood gauge spender button work? 40s recast?

Job designer needs to think of something if they want to keep that magic mitigation identity. I don't think more %mitigation or raise max HP works either. (Dark arts) And it also seems that devs are refusing to give DRK Regen.

I hope they find a interesting way to incorporate more shield based mitigation. (Similar to haima)

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Originally Posted by Kirinza

Offensively, I've only heard friends say it's boring outside of the 2min. Seems like to be a tricky issue, as the 30s recast ogcd attack we had before was "too busy" for some.

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Just for me, simply adding a new 30s attack doesn't scratch the itch. I want something with a little bit of decision-making attached to it. A job can be interesting without being busy.

a 30s ogcd that gave mp would go a long way as it would indirectly give more uses of edge/tbn.

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Originally Posted by excelsiorjones

I want something with a little bit of decision-making attached to it. A job can be interesting without being busy.

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new oGCD once every 120s.
Changes the buttons for Abyssal drain, CnS, and TBN, into new versions.
Abyssal Drain/CnS can now be used even if its on CD (or wont trigger its CD if its available) will give the same heal amount, but no damage. (CnS can grant HP instead of MP)
TBN can now be used w/o MP cost, but wont trigger a free proc if it breaks. (Unlike CnS/Abyssal, this wont upgrade if its on CD, and puts the normal TBN on CD after use)

Pick which is more important in the moment.

I'm surprised that the SGE lvl 100 ability isn't what DRKs Sole Survivor should of been, imagine having a strong 3 min CD or even make it 2 mins where everyone attacking the boss gets healed per attack.

It woulda been some nice flavor for DRK but nope SGE gets old dark arts + a better Sole Survivor.

I feel like one major contributing factor to DRK game-play outside of the 2 minute burst feeling a bit boring is because the Blood resource and it's associated attacks are lacking some needed extra depth as well as the accumulation of Blood being a bit too slow.

With cartridges on GNB, outside of burst prep, using those feel pretty good because you are generating 1 per combo so you are either expending 1 at then end of every combo or pooling 2 and expending those after 2 combos. That helps break up the repetition of the 1-2-3 combo by regularly having additional weaponskills inserted between combos.

On Warrior it's fairly similar with Rage with the main difference being that it takes 2 combos to generate enough Rage to use Fell Cleave and then just 1 combo on the 3rd set of combos.

The problem with DRK is it only generates 20 Blood per combo and so it take 3 combos to generate enough to do a Bloodspiller then 2 combos on the next set, because of the 10 Blood left over from the initial 3 combos, and then rinse repeat.
That extra combo or two throughout the rotation before you can do something to break up that 1-2-3 repetition really starts to add up and contribute a lot to a sense of monotony with DRK, especially considering they don't have a lot else going on in terms of additional or alternative weaponskills to use that change up their rotation.

Now, I'm not saying that DRK needs a bunch of new weaponskills to break up the repetitive combo-heavy rotation. I actually like that DRK is more focused on OGCD ability usage and I want it to stay mostly as such. However, it definitely needs more to break up just using the 1-2-3 combo over and over for long periods in their GCD rotation.

What I would potentially like to see is an increased rate of Blood gain such as changing Soul Eater from only giving 20 to giving 30. That simple change would greatly increase the number of Bloodspillers that would be available to break up the 1-2-3 repetition.
While that alone could greatly alleviate the "combo fatigue" many players feel with DRK's rotation, Bloodspiller, and Quietus somewhat, by themselves are still a bit bland and perhaps an additional affect or buff added to them would increase the enjoyment of using them, especially if they synergized with a different ability. Even something as simple as giving the DRK a buff that causes the next Edge or Flood within X number of seconds to do additional damage would be a massive improvement.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

I feel like one major contributing factor to DRK game-play outside of the 2 minute burst feeling a bit boring is because the Blood resource and it's associated attacks are lacking some needed extra depth as well as the accumulation of Blood being a bit too slow.

With cartridges on GNB, outside of burst prep, using those feel pretty good because you are generating 1 per combo so you are either expending 1 at then end of every combo or pooling 2 and expending those after 2 combos. That helps break up the repetition of the 1-2-3 combo by regularly having additional weaponskills inserted between combos.

On Warrior it's fairly similar with Rage with the main difference being that it takes 2 combos to generate enough Rage to use Fell Cleave and then just 1 combo on the 3rd set of combos.

The problem with DRK is it only generates 20 Blood per combo and so it take 3 combos to generate enough to do a Bloodspiller then 2 combos on the next set, because of the 10 Blood left over from the initial 3 combos, and then rinse repeat.
That extra combo or two throughout the rotation before you can do something to break up that 1-2-3 repetition really starts to add up and contribute a lot to a sense of monotony with DRK, especially considering they don't have a lot else going on in terms of additional or alternative weaponskills to use that change up their rotation.

Now, I'm not saying that DRK needs a bunch of new weaponskills to break up the repetitive combo-heavy rotation. I actually like that DRK is more focused on OGCD ability usage and I want it to stay mostly as such. However, it definitely needs more to break up just using the 1-2-3 combo over and over for long periods in their GCD rotation.

What I would potentially like to see is an increased rate of Blood gain such as changing Soul Eater from only giving 20 to giving 30. That simple change would greatly increase the number of Bloodspillers that would be available to break up the 1-2-3 repetition.
While that alone could greatly alleviate the "combo fatigue" many players feel with DRK's rotation, Bloodspiller, and Quietus somewhat, by themselves are still a bit bland and perhaps an additional affect or buff added to them would increase the enjoyment of using them, especially if they synergized with a different ability. Even something as simple as giving the DRK a buff that causes the next Edge or Flood within X number of seconds to do additional damage would be a massive improvement.

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call me conceited. idc. these arguments have been made for years now.
give it another 10 blood on Syphon Strike, for example. Or give it back another GCD combo skill to, oh idk, restore some health.
"WOW so its just WAR with shittier healing even more now."
Devs have screwed the job over and resources arent being put into it.

I said this in my own thread but it'd be nice if DRK was the actual sustain/drain tank. They were originally in HW and SB and traditionally have self healing and lifesteal in other FF games. It's very weird they went the healing route on WAR instead. I feel like bloodwhetting should honestly have been what an upgrade to blood weapon should have been

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Originally Posted by AddictedToWitches

I said this in my own thread but it'd be nice if DRK was the actual sustain/drain tank. They were originally in HW and SB and traditionally have self healing and lifesteal in other FF games. It's very weird they went the healing route on WAR instead. I feel like bloodwhetting should honestly have been what an upgrade to blood weapon should have been

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Bloodbath was originally on Maurader, it always had self heals. Dark knight wasn't really a self healing tank necessarily, it was capable of doing some monkey magic with abyssal drain and blood price but that was only really for massive aoe pulls.

The Eukrasia effect on Dark Arts was the real mechanic and it was essentially the magic tank with strict mp management. A lot of the design philosophy has changed over the years to make it irrelevant. I imagine they could probably still have some kind of unique mana mechanic (ie using it for more mitigation, use in place of HP etc) but the 2m meta doesn't really allow for much variation in fights. It's possible but they'd have to rework the mana+damage aspect to be more functional than the afterthought it currently is.

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Originally Posted by AddictedToWitches

stuff

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as the above poster said about WAR, it was made the healer tank in 1.23 and 2.0 which is odd, since PLD is mostly based on the Knight jobs that could heal, and WAR is based on a mash up of Knights that couldnt heal, and Berserker. (Im not sure what Warrior was called in the japanese version of FFXI. I just know PLD was just called Knight. edit: double checked WAR, and its soldier/warrior depending on who does the translation)

With DRKs sometimes having heals, its not too far fetched to be the "drain" tank. (Id make it more complex than that personally, but imma not flood the thread with "what if" versions of DRK right now)

EDIT#2: most of the job design was changed when Yoshida stepped in, and wanted to base a lot of it on Lineage 2. So this is why DRK was the "Magic Defense Tank", and SMN was the "poison/DoT job".